Julia > Julia's Quotes

“Belief isn't simply a thing for fair times and bright days...What is belief - what is faith - if you don't continue in it after failure?...Anyone can believe in someone, or something that always succeeds...But failure...ah, now, that is hard to believe in, certainly and truly. Difficult enough to have value. Sometimes we just have to wait long enough...then we find out why exactly it was that we kept believing...There's always another secret.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Mistborn: The Final Empire

“You hate change. I hate it too. But things can't stay the same- and that's well, for when nothing changes in your life, it's as good as being dead”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Hero of Ages

“It is the most counterintuitive aspect of Christianity, that we are declared right with God not once we begin to get our act together but once we collapse into honest acknowledgment that we never will.”
― Dane C. Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers

“we are all beautiful even as we are all part of the problem, and that to be a part of the problem is to be human”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“Many boys will bring you flowers. But someday you'll meet a boy who will learn your favorite flower, your favorite song, your favorite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won't matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Suddenly evil isn’t punching people or even hating them. Suddenly it’s all that stuff you’ve left undone. All the kindness you could have given. All the excuses you gave instead.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
― Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God

“She loved the teachings of the Five Visions. Humility. Sacrifice. Seeing another's problems before your own. Yet she was beginning to think that she-- along with others-- had taken this belief too far, letting her desire to seem humble become a form of pride itself. She now saw that when her faith had become about clothing instead of people, it had taken a wrong turn.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Warbreaker

“There was an intimacy to all violence, she supposed. The better you knew someone, the more terribly you could hurt them.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“There was rarely an obvious branching point in a person's life. People changed slowly, over time. You didn't take one step, then find yourself in a completely new location. You first took a little step off the path to avoid some rocks. For a while, you walked alongside the path, but then you wandered out a little way to step on softer soil. Then you stopped paying attention as you drifted farther and farther away. Finally, you found yourself in the wrong city, wondering why the signs on the roadway hadn't led you better.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Emperor's Soul

“The things we do to avoid difficult things are often worse than the difficult thing.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, Last Night

“I notice, once again, that company that’s not the right fit for you is so much lonelier than being happily alone.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, Last Night

“In the end, all men die. How you lived will be far more important to the Almighty than what you accomplished.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

“The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

“Beyond that, memories have a way of changing on us. Souring or sweetening over time—like a brew we drink, then recreate later by taste, only getting the ingredients mostly right. You can’t taste a memory without tainting it with who you have become.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea

“To do what little good he can with his life. To ask for nothing more, to bow his head, pitifully grateful, God’s humble and grateful servant. Can he imagine anything less like himself? And yet here he is, defeated, relieved, forgiving everything, praying only to be forgiven.”
― Sally Rooney, Intermezzo

“I don't think you turn thirty and become immune to mistake-making or lesson learning. You grow wiser (supposedly) but never omniscient. There's always something you need to be taught, and so you keep learning and you keep growing up- until you're dead.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“You're Christian Shu. Do you always believe in God?

Yeah, of course. Got To.

Why?

Because, she says. I can't carry on living believing human beings are as good as it gets. She looks at me.

We're the worst.”
― Jessica George, Maame

“You learn nothing very profound about yourself simply by being bullied; but by bullying someone else you learn something you can never forget.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Could he really do the gruesome things he does to her and believe at the same time that he’s acting out of love? Is the world such an evil place, that love should be indistinguishable from the basest and most abusive forms of violence?”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“I find myself thinking that maybe every bit of heartbreak in life can be rearranged and used for something beautiful, that it doesn't really matter whether I chose this path or I was born onto it, so long as I stop and appreciate the path itself.”
― Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“No man can judge another man’s heart or trials, for no man can truly know them.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Rhythm of War

“Of the life eternal I have no sense. I understand it is very fashionable, in your era, to suppose there is nothing but oblivion after death.” “It’s not ‘fashionable.’ It’s just a lot of people don’t see any rationale for believing in it. Seems like a fairy tale.” He shrugged. “Belief has very little to do with rationale. Why demand a map for uncharted territory?”
― Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time

“The years pass in their hundreds and their thousands, and what does any man see of life but a few summers, a few winters? We look at mountains and call them eternal, and so they seem... but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, stars fall from the sky, and great cities sink beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings